THE NEW YORKER give it to the city of Houston in mem- ory of Martin Luther King, Jr. Houston's city fathers refused to ac- cept the gift under that condition, but de Menil bought it anyway and had it shipped to Houston, where he placed it in its present position, adjacent to the de Menils' Rothko Chapel. In spite of the Corcoran's problems, Hopps was riding high again. He was close to a number of artists who lived in or near the capital, and who loved everything he was doing. He had started a workshop program at the Corcoran, with grants for local artists to teach there. He sponsored jazz concerts there and at the Dupont Center, and mounted a hugely popular show at the Dupont Center of underground comic-strip artists- R. Crumb, Spain Rodriguez, S. Clay Wilson, Gilbert Shelton, Trina, and other talents. "He was open to anything," Frances Fralin recalls. "He had the courage to show whatever he thought was good, and he went out on a limb on so many things. His alle- giances were always to the artists; he would always fight for them, against the bureaucracy. Of course, he never liked to court the people who could do him good. He shirked that. And he had a lot of trouble getting things down on paper. I can remember sitting with him for hours on end when he couldn't get a sentence written. But he could always talk like a song, and you could listen to him by the hour." People were often infuriated with Hopps, but quite a few Corcoran employees remember working with him as the high point in their professional lives. His tendency to align himself with the artists and the museum staff, against the bureaucracy, eventually did him in. A movement to unionize museum staff workers had sprung up in the late sixties. The Museum of Modern Art went through a lot of turmoil on that account, and so did a number of other museums, including the Corcoran. Hopps knew that union organizers were talking to his people. "Some staff people would come to me for advice," he concedes, "and I'd say they mustn't talk to me about it, but inevitably we would." Vincent Melzac, who had replaced Aldus Chapin as the museum's chief executive officer, was totally op- posed to unionization, and so were the trustees. Melzac had ordered Hopps to fire Hal Glicksman, his associate di- rector, who was suspected of collabo- rating with the organizers. (Glicksman had worked for Hopps as a preparator at the Pasadena museum, and Hopps had brought him to the Corcoran.) As it happened, Carl Bernstein, of the Washington Post, who was a friend of Hopps's had been looking into some of Melzac's business connections, and Bernstein's subsequent articles on the subject became a factor in Melzac's resigning as the Corcoran's chief ex- ecutive. Melzac's departure, however, did not resolve the problem. Hopps came under increasing suspicion, and when a Corcoran employee whom he had hired denounced him to the trust- ees, saying that he had been fully aware of the unionizing efforts, he was summarily dismissed. LUTYENS III' 11111 III In f; . ....:. -........-: "':-.."""'":-. " ' :". . ,...:..: ..:" tot' "fC'... . - '"" .:::: : ::: .:.::_:#:-. =;:::-_: t " ''- "" . : ...;....::: ...,:;, "'-;'. ...., Fulbrook "I Garden Bench De!>lgn: Slr Edwin Lutyen&, 1897 Fir61 Serieb Llmlted EdItIOn Through special permission - of the Lutyens family, two hundred and fifty authorized collector T HE news of Hopps's dismissal reached him in Italy, where he was serving as the American commis- sioner for the 1972 Venice Biennale. The Smithsonian Institution has a say in choosing the Biennale commission- ers; Hopps owed his appointment to Joshua Taylor, Shirley's old teacher, who had left the University of Chicago to become the director of the National Collection of Fine Arts, a branch of the Smithsonian in Washington. (It is now called the National Museum of American Art.) Hopps was installing his show in Venice when he got a telephone call saying that he was out of a job. Taylor, who was also in Venice, came to the rescue. He took Hopps out to lunch and urged him to come and work at the N.C.F.A.- something he had proposed several times in the past. Hopps accepted the offer. But first, he said, he wanted to take some time off and travel around Europe with Helen Goldberg, the young woman he had recently married. This was Hopps's first extended exposure to Europe's aesthetic traditions. He and Helen travelled in Italy, Spain, and Portugal for about six weeks. In ad- dition to seeing all the works of Piero della Francesca and a great deal of Giotto, he spent long mornings alone in cafés, writing notes and thinking about the high state of European cul- ture-something he had never done in daylight before and has never done since. "There were moments of bliss and moments of total anxiety," he remembers. "When we got home, I went straight down to Thomas J efferson's house at Monticello, to reassure myself that something that beautiful and willful could be built in reproductions of the famous Fulbrook ,'"- Garden Bench will now be constructed and made avaIlable to the public for the first tlme SInce Its oliglnal design. Conceived nearly 100 years ago for the Fulbrook Garden in Surrey} England, this stately and decorative bench is destined to become a valuable Investment. It IS intended for those with a reverence for history and a dis- cerning appreciation for quality design and craftsmanship that can only be found in an authorized and recognIzed furniture classic. Each bench is numbered in sequence of order receipt and issued with a notarized certificate of authenticity. Reservations, at a prIce of $2,950.00, will be accepted only until 15 August and are strictly limited to the fIrst two hundred and fifty subscribers. Estate EdItions 1M invites you to call 212.334.5570 for a brochure about this specIal offering. þS'T ATE .. D I T ION TM ..... S t :: , I I BY ARKITEKTURA 379 West Broadway NewYork j NY 10012